GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 322093
Request: global menubar for all GTK+ apps
Last modified: 2006-01-27 19:15:12 UTC
I'd like to request the option of having a global menubar. This means there's only one menubar visible on the screen, it's dynamic and applies to the active window / application. I don't know how hard this is to do in GTK+. I assume it's not impossible, because I can get something close to it right now. After enabling detachable menubars in gconf-editor (the key only applies to bonoboui apps afaik) I launched two apps (gedit and evolution) and detached their menubars to the top of the screen (left corner). Switching between windows will correctly bring the menubar from the active window to the top, that's great! In addition to having to move the menubars manually for each new window, there are other problems: - only bonoboui apps support this?; - menu height is finite; - the window manager (I'm using metacity) ignores the menubar when maximizing windows. It should treat the menubar like a panel; - menubars appear on the window list; - If I'm using gedit and I switch to a non-gtk application, I still see the gedit menubar. The problem also happens if the new window is a GTK app with no menubar (GNOME control panels for example). It should only draw the menubar for the focused window. That's how GNUstep appears to work. The problem is that I still want the gedit menubar if the active windows is Gedit Preferences (which has no menubar). This is a problem that I can live with though. Is this doable in GTK+? Anyone wants to do it? ;)
(In reply to comment #1) > I'd like to request the option of having a global menubar. This means there's > only one menubar visible on the screen, it's dynamic and applies to the active > window / application. > > I don't know how hard this is to do in GTK+. I assume it's not impossible, > because I can get something close to it right now. > > After enabling detachable menubars in gconf-editor (the key only applies to > bonoboui apps afaik) I launched two apps (gedit and evolution) and detached > their menubars to the top of the screen (left corner). > > Switching between windows will correctly bring the menubar from the active > window to the top, that's great! In addition to having to move the menubars > manually for each new window, there are other problems: > - only bonoboui apps support this?; > - menu height is finite; > - the window manager (I'm using metacity) ignores the menubar when maximizing > windows. It should treat the menubar like a panel; > - menubars appear on the window list; > - If I'm using gedit and I switch to a non-gtk application, I still see the > gedit menubar. The problem also happens if the new window is a GTK app with no > menubar (GNOME control panels for example). > It should only draw the menubar for the focused window. That's how GNUstep > appears to work. The problem is that I still want the gedit menubar if the > active windows is Gedit Preferences (which has no menubar). This is a problem > that I can live with though. > > > Is this doable in GTK+? > > Anyone wants to do it? ;) For which gtk/gnome version you want it? In gnome 1.2 there were a hack involving a sawfish script and gnome-panel, gnome-libs and gnome-control-center patches. This hack allowed a global menubar for all the gtk+ 1 apps. But AFAIK that hack is dead and doesn't work in gnome2/gtk2 and besides that a bunch of Windoze heads took control of the key development positions in gnome so seeing a global menubar there would be next to impossible right now.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 109007 ***